Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
Lighting fixtures embodying LEDs may be desirable in various settings such as, for example, commercial settings. Currently, most sensors that are utilized in commercial settings in combination with LED lighting fixtures are installed to capture relevant data on large areas. For example, an office may have one presence sensor in a space that will sense movements anywhere in the space and cause all lighting fixtures in the space to be illuminated in response to detected movement. Also, for example, an office may have one ambient light sensor in a space that will sense an ambient light level and cause a light output intensity of all lighting fixtures in the space to be adjusted based on the ambient light level. Such sensors may enable limited control of lighting fixtures, but do not provide for initial configuration, fine tuning, and/or adaptation of individual lighting fixtures and/or individual light sources.
Initial configuration of lighting fixtures in a commercial environment is often accomplished by calculating the number of luminaires and spacing to height ratio based on the target working surface illuminance and uniformity criteria. Such initial configuration is often time consuming and/or not adapted to particular features of the commercial space. Fine tuning of the initial configuration is likewise often time consuming and/or not adequately adapted to particular features of the commercial space. Also, such initial configuration is not easily adaptable to changes in the layout and/or usage of the office space.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide lighting configuration apparatus and methods that utilize distance sensors and that optionally overcome one or more drawbacks of certain lighting configuration technologies.